Presentation and rendering of images, graphics and video and other types of media and multimedia content on data processing systems and user terminals, such as computers, and in particular on mobile terminals have increased tremendously the last years. This increase in media rendering and utilization of vastly different data presenting devices and terminals often requires processing of the media content in order to adapt the content to the capabilities of the particular rendering devices. For example, a first wireless communications unit generates an image in a first image format and according to a first image standard, which are compatible with the capabilities of the communications unit. The generated image is then, wirelessly, sent to a second communications unit having other image processing capabilities. In order to enable the second communications unit to render and display the image, an image transcoding is preferably performed prior the rendering.
Image transcoding, and media transcoding in general, changes the properties of the media e.g. by transcoding the media between different encoding standards and/or convert the media between different media formats. The resulting transcoded media can be rendered in the target rendering device since it is now in a format and according to a standard that the rendering device can handle.
The European patent application no. 1 137 289 discloses methods and apparatuses for compensating for various processing capabilities of receiving terminals regarding moving picture content. A receiving terminal requests multimedia content from a data access server by transmitting a content request and information of its own processing capabilities. The access server then requests content information from a multimedia content server and subsequently receives the requested multimedia content. The access server utilizes the terminal information and the content information as transcoding hints when it transcodes the received multimedia content into a format that is “as optimal as possible” for the receiving terminal. The so-transcoded content is finally transmitted to the receiving terminal.
The cited European application, thus, teaches usage of transcoding hints in the media transcoding in order to adapt the media to the particular rendering device. Although this transcoding enables rendering the media at the rendering device, the transcoding itself causes degradations and alterations of the media. For example, an encoding standard can lack the options and semantics to incorporate the functionality of another encoding standard, which means that the transcoded media not fully can exploit the functionalities of the original media format/standard when transcoded into a new format/standard. This in turn will lead to that, even though the media actually can be rendered, the user-perceived quality when rendering the transcoded media is far from perfect and typically (much) worse compared to rendering the original non-transcoded media, if possible.